And all the fish that lay in dirty water dying
by kammoe
Summary: Sam's been taken. It gives him time to think. (And come apart)
1. Chapter 1

radiohead is good

metallica is good

but the title is taken from zeppelin go figure

* * *

Sam takes it like a champ, or maybe that's what his dad would say if he had graying hairs and a penchant for giving out free compliments.

Sam highly doubts this.

When they take him they don't want any sort of resistance so they drug him and lock him up, fast and quick. And so it goes, every night. They'll deliver his food, he'll fight through chains and raw nerves humming with animosity, and then he'll slowly fall apart. All just so he can lay a scratch on them, but it's ineffective and sloppy, so they just drug him again. Every night, just to get him to sleep.

Even when he's lucid he thinks he's high.

At first it's a cell with a low, long piece of thick styrofoam to lie on. Handcuffs loop through the bars and he's attached there for a good portion of the day. When they un-cuff him, Sam stands up and counts the 12 exact steps it takes, toe to toe, to get from one end of the cell to the other. Then when his wrists get infected from the cuffs and he breaks his thumb trying to get them off, they decide bars and cells and handcuffs aren't enough.

Through a drug induced haze and dubious methods, they manage to move him to another place. Now this one is _cold_. He hasn't seen light in however long he's been here and everything stops distinguishing itself through shapes and the dark. He prefers not seeing though, afraid of what he'll find. Sam thinks it's funny that he used to try and fight, but know he doesn't even remember human contact. All the shit they siphon through his veins spins his mind out of control, makes him think his feelings aren't real.

The new place is 4 concrete walls and a concrete ceiling and floor. It gets cold at night and Sam counts the 7 exact steps it takes, toe to toe, to get from one wall to the other. His new cell doesn't come with a place to lie down.

After weeks, months maybe, he can't be too sure, they stop giving him the drug for a few nights. It's a wild guess really, because _fuck_ if his body even has the slightest remembrance of day and night. Sam throws up and writhes on the ground and his skull feels like it's being fucking cracked open. He doesn't sleep and he doesn't eat, he just shakes until his bones feel like they're coming apart.

Hell was better than _this_.

To distract himself he thinks of high school, and Radiohead songs, and college, and Walt Whitman poems, and Jess, and at some point his mind wanders over to Lucifer. It's Stockholm syndrome, if anything. He should be dead. He should be really, _really_ dead. The whole situation makes him think of Metallica, if anything.

 _Death greets me warm_. Ironic, considering every time he'd died, it'd come cold and unwelcoming.

 _Dean_ was the one who loved Metallica the most. Sam was fine with it, but he generally learned to tune the music out, creating a headspace around it like you do when a fan is going round and round in your room at night. He still knows the lyrics to every song though.

Dean.

God, he misses Dean. The first few days Sam remembers screaming his name over and over and _over_ , until all he could do was stare with an open mouth and cracked lips at what he thought was the ceiling. Dean, who always had a shitty plan and always fucking failed only to get up again and fucking succeed. Dean, who was crazier than a shit-house rat. Dean, who was probably having heart attacks everyday just looking for Sam. Dean, who Sam hoped didn't care anymore. Dean who took care of him when-

Dean, who's never going to come find him because all he is now is a husk of man.

One day though, after being denied water for a day or two, just when he's delirious enough to start wishing he could die out loud, _they_ come for him.

No handcuffs, no restraints, just bare hands that take him and throw him onto tiled ground. Freezing water turns on and pours above him and he wants to fucking _cry_ he's so happy. Instead he settles for sitting under the spray for as long as they let him, practically inhaling the water until he almost throws up.

They take him out just in time and throw him back in his cell. When he thinks that maybe he was supposed to shower instead of drink his weight in water, he laughs, because his train of thought has no stops anymore. Sam thinks they've finally managed to crack him.

He wonders who _they_ are.

The place is concrete, and it gets unbearably hot. They throw him under the spray twice more, but the water is boiling hot instead of deliciously cool. He doesn't want to, but this is his only source of water so he drinks anyway. Besides, he can't cry anymore if there's nothing to fuel the tears.

He lies on the too-cold ground in his cell and wonders why he hasn't tried clawing his eyeballs out yet. Somehow, it starts hurting less than all the memories locked in his head.

The drugs come faster and the water gets slower, and when's the last time he ate?

Dean.

Dean and his stupid Metallica. Dean filters through his dreams along with Jessica and Jody and Castiel and Claire and Alex and Garth and everyone else he once knew. At some point John makes it in there and Sam would like to scream if he could.

Except, Dean sounds too close for Sam to be dreaming because there's a litany of _okay okay okay_ in his ears. Sam knows this must be a side-effect of the drugs because it's only ever _okay_ when he's not awake.

Eventually, like most things, it ends.

Or it turns into a new beginning. Sam, who can't even stand up anymore, gets picked up and hauled out. Shipped away, like a box full of nothing. He sees light for the first time in _god_ knows how long when they throw him out of the back of a pick up and onto pavement.

He thinks he might be going blind.

He knows he's lost his mind.

* * *

part 2 coming soon


	2. Chapter 2

Dean is losing his mind.

Dusty town after dusty town, ignored speed limit after ignored speed limit, depressing motel after depressing motel. _He's nowhere._

Fuck. He takes to screaming it in the car with the windows rolled down, as the Impala eats up the pavement between everywhere where Sam is _not._ His little brother is gone, disappeared off the face of the Earth, and it's his fucking fault.

 _xxx_

A chilly October night and Dean almost drives off a bridge because his eyes won't stay open. He's becoming Sam now, dependant on coffee and paranoia. The beer and whiskey and liquor's all been put away for now, because they make him sleepy and giggly and so unconcentrated he sometimes forgets about Sam.

 _xxx_

A freezing November morning, right before dawn and Dean's holed up in a mineshaft, rubbing his frozen hands together like kindling. His head is filled with agony and anger and he's so scared all the time because if Sam is _dead_ -

There's a dead witch next to him, head bleeding out into his jeans. He tries to move her over, but there isn't enough space. Not in his head, not in the mineshaft. Dean killed her quick though because he doesn't have _time_ for slow, painful deaths. Sam doesn't have time.

The witch was supposed to help him with a tracking spell, but once she found out for who, she didn't care. For a second, Dean wishes Rowena weren't dead. For a long minute, he wishes they'd taken him instead.

As his jeans turn dark and the air turns sour, he turns his head a fraction of an inch, towards the witch's unfeeling face. He can't move the rest of his body because the space is so cramped and everything is going numb, but somehow he thinks that's for the best.

Dean leans over to the witch's face and whispers something as soft as possible, because he only wants the dead to hear. Maybe Sam's among them. The rising sun rides in through broken wood and jagged rock, catching the corpse in the eyes. The eyes seem to say, _No, he's not dead. Death would be too kind._

Later some hikers find him, and when everyone decides he has hypothermia, he wonders if she was talking about him.

 _xxx_

A grey December afternoon and Dean stumbles upon a clue. Maybe God finally took fucking pity. He gets out of the shower and almost throws up with dizzy excitement. He can feel it thrumming through his veins and when his teeth chatter he's _giddy_. Every hunter in the network k _nows_ Sam's missing, and when Dean gets a call, he drops everything.

There's no one there. Just an abandoned park bench with a brown bag resting compliantly like a kid told to sit and wait. Sam never waited though, did he? Dean rushes to open the bag, a big smile on his face, because _what if_. Later he'll hate himself even more because should have known. He should have _fucking_ known. He looks for his brother for two months and someone leaves a brown bag sitting alone on a park bench. He should have _known_.

It's a bloodied jacket with rips and tears and he _knows_ its Sam's. On the tag, someone drew a smiley face, a gun directly to its right.

Dean's only looked for his brother for two months, but in the hopeless December air, all he can think about is _what if, what if, what if_. Because before, Dean was facing the possibility that maybe Sam had left all on his own. Dean had the tiniest bit of hope that Sam had disappeared because the life was too much and he finally couldn't take it. It made him a shitty brother to think that, but even worse one to assume he was dead. Now that possibilities been exhausted. He slumps onto the park bench and wonders if this is what it felt like when Lucifer told Sam over and over again that he was out of the cage, only to put him right back in.

Dean holds the jacket in his arms and cries.

 _xxx_

Cars speed in and out of his peripheral vision but he can't think about anything. The word Sam has either lost meaning or found a whole new one, but Dean's mind runs circles around it anyway. Everytime he gets back in the car, he turns on the radio, but as soon the Metallica starts churning out on the crackling speakers, he feels the color leech from his face.

Fade to Black plays unsteadily in an old black car and the driver wants to throw up.

 _xxx_

There's no sun in January.

He summons a crossroads demon and begs for a deal, but no one is willing to give. They smirk and laugh but he just thinks _please, please I can't-_

Two hunters back him on a small lead he finds, but then threaten to kill him for starting the Apocalypse. He wants to ask, _which_ _one,_ because he hasn't made a joke since Sam went missing, and if they kill him, this might be his last one.

It's been 3 months and Dean doesn't have the energy to kill them. He thinks he sees something like pity in their eyes, so they let him go. The hunters laugh though, saying something along the lines of if Sam Winchester is really dead, the world maybe won't fall apart again.

Dean makes sure his fists break bones and tear skin like an Exacto knife on thin paper.

 _xxx_

February is when everything falls apart. It's when he goes from cracked to completely shattered.

One night he mechanically eats his food then takes a nap, because he has new rules now. He only eats enough to fill and sleeps enough to function, and it works, gives him more time to wander around the country aimlessly. He chases empty spaces and hollowed-out tracks, finding nothing.

Dean gets all his shit ready to leave, all on automatic, because he can never process what's happening anymore, his mind always a checklist of where he hasn't gone to look for Sam.

There, on the rug, right in front of the door, sits a brown bag.

Dean takes it with numb hands and quivering lips and opens very, very slowly. There are tufts of hair. Long, dark brown hair. Sam's fucking hair. He shoots into the bathroom and dumps it into his hands, letting the fluorescent light illuminate it better. Out falls a little slip of paper into his hands. It has 6 words written in chicken scratch, scribbled on there, like a man's dying message.

 _Do you feel the void yet?_

His hands open like a dam and the hair slips out, floating into the sink. His eyes flick to the mirror and he doesn't catch green staring back at him. All he sees is enough rage to demolish the Earth and burn it to the _fucking_ ground. In between there, he thinks he catches a little empty space of light and hope and happiness for the little things. Something crawls into his psyche and he suddenly the automatic numbness in him is switched off.

The world holds its breath for a three-second interval and not even the gravel shakes on the ground.

Then Dean Winchester loses his collective mind. His fists connect with the bathroom mirror as hard as if it were himself. The mirror cracks and coats in blood and he can't see himself and he punches and punches and punches. It sounds like the earth is splitting in two. Sam's on one half and Dean's on the other, wrecking everything he can. All he sees is someone who's lost the most important thing in their universe.

It was his fault, it was his fault, it was his fault, and Sam's never going to come back, because Dean can't find him, and all the times he almost lost him because he was being a selfish, unforgiving, _prick,_ blow up in his face.

A landmine of _desperation_ explodes in front of him and he lowers his broken hands only to kick at the wall until there's a hole the size of his head in it. Not his mind though, because there's so _much_ in there that he doesn't think the universe couldn't hold all of his hate.

He throws a lamp. _Sam is never going to forgive you, you don't fucking deserve any fucking forgiveness._

He unplugs the microwave and smashes it against the fridge. _You never apologized, for anything, you only justified yourself._

He rips the doors off the cabinet and breaks them in half. _It was always going to end with you two apart, because luck doesn't belong in your book._

He kicks down the door, gets into the Impala, and thinks that this is what losing a child feels like.

The setting sun, blood orange on deep reds, whispers to him gently, _yes_.

 _xxx_

March and it's the not knowing that's killing him.

All 50 states, thousands of towns, thousands of people, thousands of trails.

And Dean has no goddamn idea where Sam is. The brown bags stop coming and when he sits down in the Impala, the wheel permanently stained red, he sees his brother's laughing face and crinkled eyes, not entirely real smile waiting for whoever wants it.

He's sitting in the Impala, _waiting_ , because he doesn't _know_ what to do anymore and everything that mattered has turned into ash, crumbling through his fingers like Sam's hair in the wrecked motel.

The phone in his pocket vibrates and Metallica fills the empty car.

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review if u would like a third chapter hehe


	3. Chapter 3

long time coming

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"Is there anyone you know? Anyone I can call?"

Sam's eyes shift lazily from the dirty grass beneath him to the mirage in front of him. It's all blurry shapes, hands waving in front of his eyes as if he can see them. Heat waves roll off the concrete and he licks his lips thirstily. Fuck, he's so thirsty. _Fuck._ He's going to die if he doesn't drink water. He's going to shrivel up and crumble to dust.

He looks up at the ghost in front of him and wonders who pressed the mute button. His mouth's moving, but nothing's reaching Sam's ears. He wants so badly to understand what's happening. Everything's moving like molasses, slow and uncoordinated. Pinpricks of light pulse in his field of vision and he just wants to move with the rest of the world.

There's a buzzing in his ears and he wonders if they're near an electric fence.

Then for a second, everything clicks. There's a man in front of him, asking for something, looking confused as all hell. Sam blinks hazily and glances up at him. _Up_. He must be sitting on the side of the road. A voice feeds into his ears, replacing the hum of the fence, and while it's still marblely, he understands the words.

"Hey, hey! Wha-"

Sam swallows thickly, nausea rolling through him like the heat waves rising from the road. His insides feel like they're right at his throat and everything is too close. The sun, the man, the harsh reality that things will _never_ be the same. Something's changed in the air and when he realizes he doesn't want to know, he settles for the basic information he _can_ get.

"Where am I? What- What month is it?"

The grass beneath him is dry and the road stretches far behind and in front of them. He has no idea where he is. The pleasant, unfamiliar bliss he was living in is gone now. Panic grabs ahold of him like he's its rag doll, sharp teeth biting into his brain. The man stares weirdly like he's completely unsure of what to do with Sam and Sam can't muster the strength to stare back. The lack of cars on the road is making him dizzy.

"You're in Alabama. It's March."

Sam sucks in air as sharp as possible because suddenly he feels like he's not getting enough. He's thirsty and he's suffocating and the heat in the air is compressing him into something he _can't_ be.

"Alright." The man wipes a hand across his upper-lip then takes off his hat, running a hand through his hair. "Alright, we need to get you to a hospital."

He looks a lot like Bobby, is what runs through Sam's head.

The guy asks a few more questions but Sam's stuck on the whole Bobby thing. Maybe its Bobby's ghost again. Maybe he's not getting enough air and his brain isn't working right. As soon as he feels himself being grabbed by the arm and lifted up to his feet, John's voice starts screaming in his head.

 _If you don't defend yourself and you get killed, or Dean gets killed, or_ I _get killed, it'll be all your fucking fault._

Sam should be defending himself, of course, he should be defending himself, but as quickly as the Panic made a home for itself in Sam's head, it leaves. He's filled with inevitable calm and something that resembles closure. It scares him.

There's a semi stopped in the middle of the highway, and Sam realizes it belongs to the trucker almost as soon as he realizes that he's getting shoved into the passenger seat as gently as possible. He tries to help by pulling himself up but his arms are jello and his legs refuse to cooperate. It's the first car he's been in since he got taken.

It's supposed to be the Impala.

There's something Sam's supposed to do. He can't really remember. Something important. Someone he's supposed to call? He's cold. It's cold inside the truck. The driver's looking at him with bare-bone concern and painful empathy. Sam shivers involuntarily and sticks his hands up his shirt, rubbing his shoulders for warmth.

"Here."

A lump of clothing lands in his lap and Sam can only stare. Everything's still too slow. They're inside a moving vehicle and he can still hear an electric buzz. His brain won't connect what's happening with how he's feeling and everything is _wrong_ but he's not worried, and he should be, because-

"What did you get yourself into?" The man mutters, flicking his eyes to Sam every once in a while.

They're moving. The man is driving, going faster than he should be. He looks like he knows what he's doing. Easily twice Sam's age, and with hands tight on the wheel, he looks like he's done this before.

Sam doesn't care. Sam does not give a _single_ shit.

The way he sees it, he's too cold and too shaky and too exhausted to even lift himself up but he can't sleep because they're not here to-

 _Fuck._

Oh fuck. _They're_ not here to fill him up with all that shit that kept him sleeping for months. And suddenly he wants to laugh. He wants to _howl_ it's so funny. He wants to bite on his lips hard enough to draw blood. Sam's alone for months, with barely any human contact and now? Now he hears buzzing in his ears like clockwork. Now he's never going to get relief.

He wonders if it's possible to drown in your own thoughts.

By the time he manages to clock back into it, they're off the highway. Disassociation seems like it's his new reality and everything continues to move at it's infuriating pace. Sam's eyes are glued to the sleeves of a hoodie he doesn't even remember putting on and he wonders when they had time to-

Oh.

Sam looks at the man and then down at the hoodie he's wearing, stretching it out in front of him. There are creme colored letters on solid grey and his eyes catch on a little patch on the sleeve. It's a navy rabbit, standing up with its ears perked.

He stares until he's being shoved.

"Hey, hey, come on. Come on," It's the driver again, this time at his side. He's holding the truck door open with his body, hand stretched out to help Sam clamber down from the seat. Sam wearily looks out past the man at his surroundings, struggling to concentrate. He wants to pay attention, he wants to get a clue as to where he is but his brain isn't willing to focus on anything for more than two seconds.

"Come on, boy. We're gonna get you help."

Sam tumbles out of the car and lets foreign arms catch him, wondering if maybe he should try a little harder. There's a building a few yards in front of them, he can see the entrance behind wandering spots in his eyes. Maybe he should try a little harder.

No.

He should rest.

-x-

Scratchy white sheets and tangled lines of liquid, Sam doesn't know where he is.

Oh, he knows _where_ he is, he just doesn't know _enough_.

His eyelashes are clumped together and when he finally blinks, he sees chairs, the end of a bed, machines, the man-

Enough hunts and enough hurt have landed him in the hospital a ridiculous amount of times. He knows where he is. The truck driver is sleeping, chin resting on his chest. Every few seconds he'll twitch and his elbow will jerk back, hitting the curtain separating him and Sam from the rest of the world. His hands are strangely clasped together like he fell asleep prayi-

"Hello?"

Any other occasion and his whole body would go rigid, his face hardening with attention and a little bit of fear. Now Sam's just tired, so tired he doesn't feel like anything deserves his full attention, so he just lets his eyes amble up until they reach his face.

"Were you praying?" Sam croaks, misused voice and dry throat making the end of the sentence catch on a cough.

The guy looks confused, brows coming together in an arrow that's pointing down, mouth set in a tiny frown. He's leaning forward now, hands unclasped.

"Was I praying?" The man restates.

Sam nods.

"I was." He responds, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck.

"S' a fuckin' waste of time," Sam mumbles, head throbbing with the effort of speaking. Moving his lips and forming coherent sentences has never been harder, not even when he tried to tell Dean about Lucifer and the Cage.

Dean.

Sam should call him, maybe tell the truck driver who his older brother is, his phone number or something.

No.

He should rest.

-x-

The next week is hazy and he doesn't think he remembers the days in order.

He sleeps most of the time, but sometimes Sam's awake enough to shower, and throw up the tube in his nose, and take a few tentative steps down the hospital halls. He wears sunglasses wherever the light is too bright, and it makes him feel like he's coming out of the cage all over again.

Weak and pathetic and washed up.

The man's always there though.

His name is Glenn Moss. Glenn Moss who has three children called Stacy, Jack, and Lena (He had four, but Ray is dead) and lives in Irondale, Alabama, and drives a semi around the country, and should be retired but the settled life isn't for him, and likes to go fishing on the weekends, and gets calls from his children that he always answers, and loves to see his grandkids at Christmas, and likes to read Bradbury, and whose parents died when he was 13, and who sometimes wonders why no one sends letters anymore.

Sam highly doubts Glenn _knows_ he knows all this because he only catches these bits and pieces of a life when the older man is trying to talk Sam to sleep. Sleep is never Sam's choice, and he's given up trying to fight the unending exhaustion that hits him whenever it wants. It's the pain medicine and whatever else his doctor loads into his IV that helps fuel the nightmares too. Nightmares are never Sam's choice and when he wakes up screaming about the devil and iron bars, he just looks down and plays with his hospital bracelet, mumbling about a fucked up childhood. That's when Glenn starts to talk.

Ironically, he never dreams of being _there_ with _them._

Sam likes to think the drugs didn't waste his brain completely and his memory's still holding up, but he doesn't remember Dean's number and maybe that should be cause for concern. Except it's not because sometimes Sam thinks he doesn't _want_ to call Dean. He didn't find him, or he doesn't want to be seen like this, not again- The reasons for evasion are endless and maybe Sam shuts out the numbers that flit through his mind.

Either way, the drugs fucked him up bad.

The doctors say they're weaning him off, bit by bit, but to Sam, it feels like they've made him go cold-turkey. Glenn reassures him, tell him that this is how it feels like and that it sucks but Sam'll make it through. Sam wants to scream through the burning in his stomach and bones, wants to scream through the chills that render him into a shaking, sweaty mess, wants to scream at Glenn and his doctor and Dean, wherever he is that _no!_

Sam knows detox, he knows withdrawal, but this is so much worse. Detox from demon blood was done in a day, two max, but the symptoms for this never seem to stop.

He'll disassociate for hours at a time, head up in the clouds, with no idea of what's been going on. His insides will be on fire, the Death Valley of California- no, of _Sam_ , and then he'll freeze, turn into Alaska's biting air, veins sealing up with frostbite. His hands will shake so much he can't even hold the TV remote in his hand to change the channel. His head crashes against migraines like mavericks and everything turns into nothing. He can't keep any food down and he can't be where there's too much light and there's always a fucking electric fence in his ears-

There are moments when Sam wishes he was back with whoever took him. The craving for it and the urge for the pain and confusion to go away-

It's overwhelming.

-x-

Today is not a good day.

Sam's brain fires up at 3 in the morning and the world turns into comets and exploding galaxies,

Sam's limbs rebel against him and his joints lock up, all he can do is curl up and gnash his teeth together,

Sam's skin is the scorching desert and his insides are Arctic ice,

After hours and hours of ache, the doctor declares his IV's infected. Nurses get ready to switch it out, clean out his hand and put another one back in, but he doesn't think of letting that happen. He bolts, rocketing off the bed and into the bathroom, turning around and locking the door with skeleton fingers before anyone can force themselves inside.

He's nausea's bitch now.

But there's nothing to throw up except for the spit that clings to his lip and when buzzing eyes look up in the mirror, they don't recognize who they see. Not his face, not his hair, not the way he looks like a terrified animal. The only thing Sam wants to acknowledge is the hoodie Glenn gave him, the one he's been wearing since he picked him up off the highway. _Vallejo Jackrabbits_ , are the bold letters across his chest and just trying to read them makes his head spin.

Sam slumps bonelessly to the floor, crawling back until he hits the door.

"Sam? Sam, come on open the door."

"It's me, Glenn."

"We're just trying to help you."

"Sam? Please,"

Glenn's practically begging, and Sam can tell he's kneeling on the floor by how close his voice sounds. But-

"No," Sam mumbles, choking on his words like someone shoved them down his throat.

 _No, no, no, no, NO,_

Everything goes quiet and the silence stretches on for eternity. It hasn't been this quiet since he was locked up.

"Sam? I'm coming back soon, ok? I'm just gonna go get something." Glenn says gently, and Sam wonders when the cracks started showing up in his voice.

"Sam?"

"Ok," Sam whispers after he nods because he's behind a door.

No one can see him now.

-x-

 _"Out there in the cold water, far from land, we waited every night for the coming of the fog, and it came, and we oiled the brass machinery and lit the fog light up-"_

Sam startles awake, breath catching in his throat. He coughs into his sleeve and leans his head back against the door, screwing his eyes shut. The voice is coming from outside, strong and steady and saying the words like that's what it was made to do.

Glenn's reading him Bradbury.

Slowly, Sam turns his head so his ear is pressed up against the door. He listens, focuses on the words and their rhythm, letting them in until Glenn finishes the story, the words dying on his lips.

"You know, I named my son after this guy."

"My wife wanted to lengthen it to Raymond, which I was fine with of course because I could call him Ray. Read this story to him every night. He'd ask again, and again and again. I'd complain sometimes, you know. Really wish I hadn't. If I could, I'd read it to him over and over until I lost my voice."

Glenn breathes in and Sam fiddles with his hospital bracelet, spinning it in mindless circles.

"Raymond was a good kid. Back when we lived up in California, he loved it there, was always smiling, always happy. I think you would have liked him, Sam. Anyway, he was a really good kid. Grew up to be a good man too, but life, life wasn't easy on him."

"They called me one morning, right after I'd let the dog out. Said they found him dead in an alley with needles in his arms and heroin in his veins. I'd known he was dealing with some stuff, but-" Glenn stops for a second and makes a weird noise in the back of his throat.

"I got so mad at him I pushed him away and let him deal with it on his own. Never even tried to help him recover, I was so angry. He suffered alone. He died alone, and when I saw you on the road I couldn't let you suffer alone either."

Sam wraps his arms around himself and takes a couple of deep breaths, not really knowing what to say or what to do.

"I'm so sorry Glenn, that must have-." He starts to say it but then he catches black sharpie on the inside of his bracelet, numbers scribbled down hastily.

Dean dying every day down in Florida, Dean getting ripped to shreds by Hellhounds, Dean killing himself so he could help a family, Dean and the Mark-

"Glenn. Glenn, can you do me a favor?" Sam slips the bracelet off his skinny wrist, turns it inside out, and slides it under the door.

"Call my brother?"

* * *

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	4. Chapter 4

When the Golden Hour comes, nothing's covered in a cascade of sun.

Blood drips off his machete, down his wrists, and trails under his shoes. His trudge to the Impala is slow and exhausted, limbs and clothes stiff. The blood that saturated all his clothes is dry now, crusting and flaking, floating in the sunrise. He clenches his hand over and over, the brown paper bag in his fist going drip drip _drip._

Anger.

It's this pulsing, _writhing_ thing. It's his catalyst, his amplifier, and he won't deny the way he smiles when it guides him like a light in the dark. He walks in crooked lines, zig-zagging across the parking lot, leaving a trail of dark liquid behind. The brown bag- Red now, it was brown once, shakes in his hand as he sets in on the roof of the car.

Dean's never felt this off-kilter.

Hands that are dyed the color of old rust, he places one on the door handle and one on the chilled black metal, leaning forward until his forehead is almost touching the roof of the car. His chest is heaving too hard and he concentrates on controlling his breathing, swallowing rational gulps of air. Something Bobby taught him, a long time ago. Something he stops doing as soon as he feels the line of blood running down the roof and rolling to a stop where his hand is pressed.

The blood of the innocent, the blood of the evil, it's all the same to him. When his brother's in the equation, it doesn't matter what face you're wearing.

Anything that stands in his way is asking to be killed, and all of a sudden it feels like the Mark of Cain's been branded on his skin again, commanding him to do what he knows he can't. Knows he shouldn't.

Knows he'll do anything if given the proper incentive.

He turns and looks behind him, eyes fixed on the warehouse, a door swinging open with an audible creak that he can still hear through the rustle of the wind. He grabs the dripping paper bag and opens the door to the car, getting in like he's never ridden the Impala before.

The bag lands on the seat beside him and he places his hands on the steering wheel, shifting slightly to accommodate this sense of unfamiliarity.

 _Sam is dead._

Words he's heard before, words he didn't want to hear again but knew were inevitable. Sam told him once that John had visited in a dream. Said, 'When has death ever stopped a Winchester'.

There's a sick sort of hope in his chest like maybe this is all a dream where death really isn't the end. Like some sick fuck on a game show is toying with him and Sam'll just waltz right up to the passenger door, whole and unscathed, big smile and wide-eyed.

Dean clumsily fishes a dented flip phone that doesn't belong to him out of his pocket, thumbing at the screen and flipping it open. There's a list of old voice messages dating all the way back to September. His finger hovers over the play button, hesitating when he sees the dried blood that crackles in between the keys of the Motorola.

He presses play.

-x-

 _"Day Five. They're here. Close to the border of Canada, up in Michigan. I think if you give me another week to learn more, I can get one of them. The tall one always goes running in the night. They're hunting something. He seems distracted, and the other one seems angry."_

 _"Day Eleven. I think I found our time-slot. Get the rest of the boys over here by tomorrow. I know what do now. We don't have to bother with the older one, it's like you said. He's different, they weren't made the same. I can feel it."_

 _"Day Twenty. It was so much easier than expected, he's ours now. He fought like a fucking bull but then he died down. I heard the stories about him, the ones where he sounds like a cold-blooded killer and a hard-ass. Hey, maybe I even got the wrong guy. This one just looks tired."_

 _"Day Forty-Five. The drug is working exceptionally well. Keeps him asleep. He's so much- I don't want to say less, but- He's different from what I thought he'd be. He never fights back, not anymore, he doesn't try to escape. Compliance is not what I thought I'd find in him."_

 _"Day One-Hundred. I thought I'd let you know, two of our subjects are dead. The drug killed them. You just need to tell me if you want me to keep giving it to him. I think if we don't he'll die, and if we do he'll die. Maybe we messed up."_

 _"Day One-Hundred and-"_

 _"I can't do this anymore. Word on the wind is that the brother is looking, getting closer. You say he never will, and maybe you're right, maybe the clues were enough to convince him, but I don't think so. I used to think that you were doing something good. Something for the rest of us. I think you lied."_

 _"I did it. I got rid of the body, dumped it out in the desert. I did what you asked, and now I'm going away. I said I'd leave you alone, but I lied. Once I'm out of the country, I'm going to call the brother, tell him everything you've done, everyone you've hurt. Do you fear the wrath of Dean Winchester? Because I do."_

-x-

Dean stares blankly at the phone, hearing the end of the messages for the fourth time since a man with the same voice called him yesterday. He replays the conversation with a man who he doesn't know. Tries to fit it all together like a lock and key.

A shaky, forgettable voice told him the location of the warehouse, where he could find the Motorola with all the voice messages and then explained that his life had run its course. Dean had shouted out, asked him to wait.

"Wait for what?"

"Tell me why. I can't hurt you now, and you don't understand what I'm going to do to everyone in the warehouse. You took my brother and you just decided on the deaths of dozens of people. If you're going to kill yourself, that's fine." Dean's voice was calm enough to resemble a flitting breeze, strong enough to belong to a sane person. He wondered who he'd become.

"Just tell me why they did it. Why you did it. What in God's name-" Dean pulled the phone away from his ear, didn't want to be heard choking up.

"I… I'm sorry." The shaky voice replied, and Dean was sure that he was cocking a gun.

"I didn't mean to. I was deluded. He'll tell you. When you go to kill him, he'll gloat about it. In his eyes, everything is right, and the rest of the world is always wrong. I'm sorry-" The voice repeated, and before Dean could even cry out again, ask him anything else, a gunshot and an audible splat rang out from the phone's speakers.

He looks up from the phone now, the sound of a gunshot reverberating in his head. In this world, everyone lies about something. Dean hadn't lied when he said the man had just sentenced to death every person in the warehouse. He turns and opens the bag, not feeling the slightest bit of disgust when a rank smell escapes the thin paper. He drops the phone in and closes it, then gets right back out of the car.

In his pocket is a little silver rectangle and he wraps his hand around it steadily as he lumbers to the trunk, opening it and pulling out a bright red canister with a black nozzle. He walks back to the warehouse with a limp, his knee wrecked since some bastard banged it with a rusty metal pipe. His mouth twitches as he enters the building, and it twitches when he gets out. He doesn't pick up his pace when he goes back to the car, ignores the climbing heat at his back.

By the time building explodes, he's miles away.

-x-

Dean sits on the hood of the Impala, clothes bloody and hands steady on his knees. There's pure lines running down his face, pale where the grime's been stripped away. His eyes are locked on the woods in front of him, and it scares him that he's not really sure what he's looking for.

He sticks his hands in his pockets and is surprised when he feels something metallic and heavy. _His phone._ He pulls it out and turns it on, waiting for the screen to light up. _Why was it off?_ His eyebrows crinkle and then shoot up when he sees the number of missed calls he has from an unknown number.

A finger grazes over the 'call back' button then presses down on it. Tentatively, he raises it up to his ear and clears his throat.

"Who is this?"

"Oh thank God. Is this- Is this Sam Winchester's brother?" An old man is talking, his words rushed like he's been waiting a long time to say them. He sounds relieved.

Dean almost chokes.

"Dean? That's what Sam tells me you're called." The guy continues talking. "Hello?"

Dean inhales again, sure that this is fake, that someone is tricking him.

"Yeah, yeah that's me."

"Sam wanted me to call you. He's safe now. I'm here with him."

 _Fuck what the fuck._

"Can I…uh, can I talk to him?" Dean doesn't believe what's happening. He hears the phone being moved around, the rustle of scratchy clothing, then-

"Dean?"


	5. Chapter 5

**hello , and here's the tea.**

 **so i posted this like a month ago on ao3 and on my tumblr, and because i never really use ffn and i feel no one really gets to it or _any_ of my writing (lol as if anyone does u jackass) on this website, i forgot about posting it here.**

 **i've decided to make the executive decision and discontinue posting on FFN, however i will finish this story on here for those of you who have read so far, but if you would like to read any of my further writing you can just check out my ao3 or tumblr which are both under the name koedeza.**

 **in the future i might just delete all my stories on here (keep them on my other accounts ofc) and use this to favorite other stories and such**

 **thanks for understanding, and hope you enjoy**

* * *

There's no air the wheat field, no chirping of birds. Only the silent rustle of wheat under his palms, the silent rustle of voices telling him to come home. It feels like he's gliding as he walks in between the stalks, legs invisible under the golden grass. The sky is an opaque blue, the white clouds stark against it. Things are…

Strangely and eerily pleasant.

It's like he doesn't know where he's going, or what he's doing here, but it's so serene that it doesn't matter anyway. He smiles crookedly, figuring that the white noise in his ears isn't coming from him, but from the place itself.

Sam keeps walking, glancing around at the clouds and stalks of wheat and his hands and his forearms. He notices that for once, he looks whole. There's no scar on his palm, or little pinpricks of constant needling in his veins, or twining red marks from claws. He can't help it when a little sound of surprise escapes his lips.

Past the wheat field, there's a forest.

Sunlight cuts through the dense pine trees, and he walks over roots and fallen branches feeling lighter than he has in weeks. Months. Years. His life. He's in a trance, completely enthralled in the way everything feels eternal in this place. Wherever he is, maybe he doesn't want to leave. Sam wouldn't mind napping in the golden wheat or climbing gnarled bark for the rest of his life.

There's a pond that he ambles past, but something in the water makes him turn back.

It's him.

He looks down, and in the water it's him. The reflection staring back at him is young, in his early 20's, how he looked right before Jessica burned on the ceiling, before Dean took him right back into the life. His hand goes up to his hair and he feels the shaggy bangs he used to have, locks curling down before his eyes.

Sam smiles.

He wanders back through the woods and to the wheat and sees someone standing in the distance, at the other end of the field. They're waving their arms up and down, shouting something that he's too far away to hear, but it doesn't sound like a worried yell. More like he's being called to set the dinner table or something. Something mundane as hell.

He takes his sweet time trekking through the field, savoring the perfect weather. It's not cold, and though the sun beats above him, light clouds block the rays, letting in the light and keeping out the heat. As he gets closer, he sees the person waving him down is Dean, a big radiant smile on his 26-year-old face. Even closer and he can see there's no worry lines, no sign that he hasn't seen a smile on his face for longer than he can remember.

"Sam! Sammy! Hey! Sammy!" Dean's shouting, putting his arms down when he sees him walking up.

Sam shakes his head and laughs, eyes crinkling with mirth. Dean pulls him into a half-hug and gives him a noogie, rubbing his head ruefully. Sam lets out a few yelps of protest until Dean lets go, giving Sam a slap on the back.

They keep walking, Dean with his hands in his pockets and Sam looking ahead to a worn dirt path stepping out of the wheat. Sam wonders where it leads to, but quickly gets distracted by how at ease Dean seems, how carefree. It's completely unfamiliar but Sam thinks he could get used to it.

"This isn't real, is it?" Sam asks without pausing, drifting along as if he hasn't said anything.

Dean seems to stop briefly but quickly regains his composure, puffing out a breathless, "Yeah."

"Some kind of fever dream?"

Dean nods, seeming disappointed "What gave it away?"

"I'm 29. You're 33. This isn't-", he gestures vaguely at their hair and their faces and a vibrant look he's never remembered on himself, "It's not us anymore." Sam shifts on his feet and remembers that when things get uncomfortable he counts his steps, a habit he formed when he was young, but now he feels no need. It's not the conversation he wanted to have but counting only seems silly now.

"Do I still pick up all the chicks?" Dean says with a smirk, but it quickly turns into a pensive stare. "I think we look real enough. Something else gave it away too," He says it without meeting Sam's eyes.

Sam nods and looks ahead at the path. It never seems to end, and he peers ahead as if there's something waiting for them.

"It's beautiful here. Peaceful, and there's the right kind of silence." Sam says. "It's unsettling, kinda, but if it weren't I don't think I'd like it as much."

"And you think beautiful isn't possible in the waking world?"

"No. I don't." Sam says, and there's an itch to say 'Not for me'.

Dean sighs and stops walking. Sam only notices when he's a few steps ahead, turning around to catch Dean staring at his feet. Sam quickly glances at his own and realizes they're both barefoot.

"I think you know how this ends for us."

"Us?"

"This is a dream. I am you. You are me. You made this all up brother." Dean shrugs, looking up at Sam with something that could be remorse.

"Yeah." Sam snorts. "Some fever dream, huh?"

He turns back to the path and knows Dean is gone now, can feel his absence like a river run dry. This is nothing like real life, he thinks, and maybe he hates himself for thinking it, even if none of this is real.

But Sam doesn't want to wake up.

A sharp gush of air rolls through the wheat field and rustles the pines and whips his hair and he inhales so hard it stings so he just, shuts his eyes.

-x-

He meets the dark with parted lips and half-lidded eyes.

Artificial air pushes up his nose and the rustle of thin hospital sheets is nothing compared to the wheat against his palms, damp dirt pressing under his feet. There's a weight by his side and soft sounds of breath he does not recognize and are not his own.

Dean's head is next to his arm.

Sam's breath catches in his throat and when he finally releases air from his lungs he's sure of what's happening. Dream in a dream. It's happened to him before, thousands of times actually, and he's nothing if not sure of that. It's a dream.

Except when Dean turns his head in sleep and moonlight lights half of his face, Sam becomes unsure of himself. There are worry lines, and a furrowed brow, and a scar on his cheekbone that he only got a year or two ago. Sam wraps an arm around himself, grabs the sharp angle of his shoulder with a hand and tries to move without a sound.

He's successful for the most part, and when he gets up he sees Dean is sitting on a chair, head resting on the bed. Sam backs up a step and bumps into the couch, putting a hand behind him to steady his shaking legs.

A Djinn dream? He feels at his neck with clammy hands and touches the crooks of his elbows.

"Sammy?"

No.

"Sammy, what are you doing up?"

No.

"This isn't- This isn't a dream?" Sam asks, voice hoarse and barely audible over the hiss and beep of machines.

"Sam, sit down before you fall down," Dean's getting up coming around the bed, eyes filled with worry and-

"Stop! Stop, Dean stop. I don't- I don't want you- Just stay there, alright?" This is the most Sam's said in hours, maybe a few days and his feet itch to make him back up, but it's not a dream and he has nowhere to go so-

"Ok. Ok." Dean sits back down slowly.

Sam's in the dark, he knows Dean can't see him, can't see how he doesn't look like himself anymore, how this person isn't Sam Winchester anymore. It's fine.

"Do you want to turn the light on?"

"No." Sam snaps, eyes flicking because he doesn't want to look Dean in the eye. Fuck. This wasn't how things were meant to be. He was supposed to get here and they would be brothers again, and Sam would not be nearly as broken as he feels, and there's an echo in his head that tells him he's nothing but wrong.

His hands shake as he runs them through his uneven hair.

He'd give anything to be dreaming.


	6. Chapter 6

A thumb runs over the steering wheel, taps every once in a while. Flexes and cracks bones, pretends it's going somewhere.

Dean knows he has to go somewhere.

He's been sitting in the car for twenty minutes, eyes flickering from the steering wheel to the entrance of the hospital, where people walk out, sometimes on their own, sometimes wheeling others out on wheelchairs. He's seen more than a few red faces, unnervingly blank stares, mothers carrying children while they cry into their shoulders.

The scent of the dead, it seems to follow him everywhere.

Dean takes a breath, too long to be normal and too short to convey how scared he is. Terrified, of walking in there and seeing his brother, seeing what he's become. What they've done to him, what they've taken. This is worse than the countless doomsday scale events they've faced, he thinks. Its fear, like a writhing worm in the pit of stomach, waiting to spread and swallow him whole.

Before he can think anymore about it he shuts off the engine, throws open the door and gets the fuck out.

-x-

In the waiting room Dean sees him, an old man with a wool hat and greying hair and skin like wrinkled leather, green eyes dark and not so welcoming.

"Dean?"

He turns to the sound of his name, like an animal startled in the dark. The old man stands up and crosses his arms, his eyes molding into disappointment or maybe anger, Dean can't really tell. If this were any other circumstance he'd say something, anything, but instead he stands there looking stupid and just nods his head. He feels like a newborn deer when he walks over to the man, stumbling over his feet, nervous hands sliding into pockets. The man holds out a hand, knobby fingers, calloused palms, the whole thing unshakable.

"Glenn Moss. I've been keeping an eye on your brother the last week or so." He firmly shakes Dean's hand, and then motions to a brightly lit hallway. "Would you like to see him?"

Dean has a lot of questions, most of them ones that can't be answered, but he shakes his head vigorously and rocks on his heels like a child and follows Glenn Moss. They turn down the hallway, go up an elevator and then to a front desk where Glenn Moss starts to talk to a receptionist. Dean catches a thumb jerking toward him once or twice but there's a rattling in his head and he's so nervous he might just throw up.

Why the fuck does he feel like this? No FBI, no security guards, no angels, no demons, no nothing. Just Sammy. Sam who's alive, and here, and being taken cared of. He feels like he's about to go into a gun fight weaponless, not even a knife on him.

The man taps on his shoulder, Dean snaps to attention and they both walk down the hall again, stopping right before the door to a room. Glenn Moss turns to look at him, dark eyes darker, that thing akin to anger pressing down on the air like a weight.

"How do I know you're his brother? How do I know you're not one of the people who hurt him?" Glenn says under his breath, taking half a step closer to Dean, knuckles tight on the door handle, as if he's barring his brother from all the evils in the world.

"Ask me anything you want." Dean whispers without hesitation.

"Why didn't you show up when I called?"

And there it is. Dean swallows and feels the worm writhe around and then slither out through his mouth in the form of three words he's never said to anyone he hasn't known for more than a decade.

"I was scared." He breathes it out like there's a ghost in the hospital, like there's hundreds.

Glenn Moss nods, puts this facade back on of a cold hard man and then nods again as if that's the only correct answer.

"He's sleeping now."

The door opens soundlessly and light floods into the room, the tsunami of reality Dean's been putting off drowning him in a matter of seconds. Sam's there, curled up on his side in the hospital bed.

Dean stills like the world's frozen over.

Sunken cheeks and paper thin eyelids and skeleton hands and black bags under his eyes and tubes like snakes and translucent skin and the twitch of his eyes behind his eyelids and the exhaustion Dean can see even when he's asleep and the shivering and the lines of pain and the-

Dean cracks the door wider.

The head full of dark brown hair, all of it chopped in uneven chunks like wood sliced from dying trees.

Dean turns away like the he's been shoved, because the person that lies in that room isn't Sammy, isn't his little brother, so before he knows what he's doing he's walking down the halls, ignoring Glenn Moss as he calls his name. He turns to the nearest stairwell and plants himself on the steps, head spinning like a top.

His feet missed solid ground, he's walking on thin air now.

-x-

An hour later and Glen Moss finds him sitting in the cafeteria.

Dean catches his eye from across the room and lowers the phone from his ear, stops playing the voice messages over and over again, slides the phone into his pocket like he's guilty. Without asking, the other man walks up to him and plunks into a chair, crossing his arms and training his eyes on a window.

"I'm sorry, I should have warned you. I know it looks bad, but he's doing much better." Glenn says focusing his eyes on him now, and Dean bits his lip hard enough to tear skin. He can only wonder what Sam looked like when they found him, only piece together the gory images of every other victim they've ever rescued in their line of work.

Dean wipes a hand across his mouth and stares at the table. "How did you find him?" His voice cracks.

"Whoever had him hostage left him on the interstate. I was driving by."

"And he was worse when you found him?"

"Yes."

"Fuck." Dean puts his head in his hands and rubs his eyes like he's trying to make them bleed.

"And you've been staying with him? He didn't tell me much when we talked on the phone, just that-" Dean swallows. "Just where he was and if I could come."

God, Dean remembers it crystal clear, the hoarse voice on the phone, the almost emotionless words. Almost, because maybe he imagined it but at first he thought Sam sounded happy, though that quickly turned into something Dean didn't recognize. He thought he'd hear more from Sam. He thought that he'd get to say more.

"Most days he's been in too much pain or too tired to really talk. That day was bad. It's good you're here now, he'd scream your name in his sleep sometimes. So." Glenn stares Dean dead in the eyes. "How come you didn't come when I called?"

Dean blinks. Once, twice, slow to work up a response. No, he's not crafting a lie but the truth hurts more than it should.

"You know I called you the day after I found him right? He kept writing a phone number on his bracelet and then slipping it off and throwing it away. I called after the third bracelet, and you definitely picked up. I heard something." Glenn talks, and Dean wants him to keep going, wants him to call him out for what he knows happened but he also wants him to stay quiet, pretend it never happened.

"Yeah. I picked up." Dean thinks it should be impossible to stare Glen Moss dead in the eyes but something about this man lets him do it. It's like he knows what's happening, what's been going through Dean's head. "I was… taking care of a few things."

"Ok."

"Ok?"

Glenn nods again in that not condescending, but not exactly sympathetic way and Dean swallows and nods back, trying to mimic any sort of control over his emotions. He's usually not all over the place like this, he's not, but seeing Sam again has him shaken up, has taken the blinders he's been wearing all these months right off.

"I want to go see him again. Is he awake?"

-x-

Sam isn't awake, but when he finally does open his eyes and sees Dean, it feels like fault lines have ruptured and the world has parted all over again. Sam on one side, Dean on the other.

This time it's literal.

They stand separated by the bed, Sam barley holding himself up with the couch and Dean close to knocking his chair over. He holds his hands out like he's surrendering, stares at Sam like he's a mirror image of himself. They're both scared, Dean can tell, but with the tremors running through him and the constant twitches of pain it seems much more palpable on Sam.

Earlier the doctors came by and ran through everything that had gone on with Sam, how he was when Glenn brought him in. Malnourished and dehydrated and infected and suffering from the side-effects of a drug they still can't identify. A concoction he'd been injected with for months, something that left his body bent a little beyond regular repair. Time will fix all is what they told Dean. Time will tell all is what Dean really thinks now that he's face to face with Sam.

"Do you want me to turn the light on?" Dean tries to make his voice gentle as possible, his hand already reaching for the lamp on the bedside table.

"No." Is what Sam snaps back, and Dean hides the flinch back as best as he can, grabbing the plastic chair behind him when it rocks from the unexpected movement.

"That's fine Sammy. I won't- I won't turn on the light."

He wasn't born and bred a gentle creature. Neither of them were, but by nature Sam is kind and calm, collected even at the most pressing of times. Dean finds it hard to emulate what he admires so much about his little brother but finds that Sam's so panicked it does the job.

"Why don't you want me to turn it on?" Dean whispers, not quite sure what to do with his body to mimic someone who has their shit together and has control of the situation.

"Because." Sam hasn't met his eyes once, and as rough pieces of hair fall into his eyes and block his line of sight from Dean, he reaches up behind him and pulls on the hood of his sweatshirt. "I don't look like me. Not the me you know."

Dean's not sure what to say to that, not sure wether affirmation or denial is the way to go, but he thinks that whatever he does, he can't lie.

"You don't. I still knew it was you. You're still Sam. But you're right, I almost didn't recognize you." Dean says softly.

Neither of them have moved.

"Ok. Ok." Sam lets out a shaky breath and Dean sighs inaudibly in relief.

"Do you want to go back to sleep?"

"No."

"But I can't turn on the light yet either,"

"No." Sam's never been the demanding type, and as his voice crumbles a little under the repeated words, so does Dean's heart. Like fabric tearing in every which way, little rips blossom across every memory Dean has about his brother. It aches for the before.

"Ok. Ok, I won't. Can I still sit here?"

"Yes, please."

And like that they stay in silence for a few minutes, Dean sitting in the hard plastic chair and Sam on the couch, his hands cradled in his lap and his hood almost over his eyes.

"Dean."

"Yeah Sammy?"

"You know I'll be myself again, right? It'll take some time I know, but- We've had worse I think, this is just different." It's a confession, one done so quietly Dean barley hears it.

Dean doesn't necessarily agree that things have ever torn him apart as much as this but he just nods in the dark and says, "Of course."

"Dean?"

"Yeah Sammy?"

"Tell me about what's happened. What have I missed." Sam still doesn't look at him, but it doesn't matter. This is a step. It's tiny, but it's a step.

"Sure." And Dean said he wouldn't lie, but from the beginning that's all that it was anyway. Because no, he won't tell Sam about the harrowing months he spent looking for him and tearing apart the country trying to find him. So he'll lie, just for now.

-x-

The next few days are a bit of a blur.

Everything Glenn told Dean is true, about how Sam sleeps and he screams in his nightmares and he sometimes gets headaches so bad he throws up all over the hoodie he washes over and over again and won't take off, the one with the little Jackrabbit on it, and how the fevers he gets are long and awful and burn him like he's on a pyre. Dean will try and keep contact with Sam through all of this, wether it's a loose hand on his wrist or a hand on the ridges of his backbone, but sometimes Sam just shoves him off and kicks him out, sensory overload making him erratic.

Glenn goes home to his wife but promises Sam he'll come back with more Ray Bradbury books soon, whatever that means. Before he leaves he gives Sam a big hug and tells him he can keep the hoodie. Dean thanks him for everything and gives him his number, then the phone in his pocket, saying that it might not explain much of anything but that just in case he ever wanted to know. He gets a blank stare, the trademark nod he's seen often in the past few days, and then he's in his truck.

Dean tries to keep Sam busy.

If Sam's feeling particularly okay, even if it's just for half an hour, he'll let Dean help him walk down to the cafeteria and they'll eat together, even if Dean has to shove food down his throat for the sake of normalcy when Sam sits across from him barley touching what he has in front of him.

They talk, and sometimes Sam flashes broken little smiles that don't reach his eyes after Dean tries to crack a joke, and will try his best to appear like he's engaged in whatever Dean's telling him, but his eyes will start to close, or he'll start getting cold, or he'll get dizzy.

They never once talk about what happened to Sam.

-x-

The fourth night Sam lies in his bed, propped up on a bunch of pillows while Dean sits on the hard plastic chair, both of them watching some rerun on TV but not really paying attention. Sam's staring at the screen with half-lidded eyes, hands under his armpits for warmth. Rain pounds down outside and thunder cracks like an axe splitting wood.

"I think I've seen this episode at least a hundred times." Sam croaks.

"Oh yeah?" Dean does a minute turn of his head to glance back at Sam. He seems him wince as he readjusts himself on the pile of pillows.

"I miss my bed." Sam's face goes funny and Dean turns around all the way, something about the way he's talking catching him off guard.

"And the Impala." Sam's eyes almost crinkle into a laugh but then he goes stoney faced again. He scratches at his elbow, something Dean's learned happens whenever Sam starts craving the drug again.

"Dude, you gotta stop scratching, I know you can't really control it but-"

"Yeah, of course I can't fucking control it," Sam mumbles and Dean's a little taken aback, not missing the bite in his words.

"Hey, look I get it's been rough, and you miss being home but the doctor's say not yet, you gotta do a few things first, you know maybe think about rehab-"

"I don't need to go into motherfucking rehab, Dean!" Sam shouts, suddenly slamming the TV remote down so hard on the table that it shatters. Into a thousand tiny pieces it goes, breaking apart and scattering across the table and the sheets and the floor. Dean feels the world still, feels it all come to a halt. Everything was going to fast, but now it's barely moving.

Sam with red-rimmed eyes and aching bones and ire that's sealed up nice and tight. Anyone can take pain and yield it into anger, they just have to know how to use it.

"I don't- I didn't," Sam glances at the ceiling, and Dean sees his eyes flick around like there's tears welling up in them.

"I didn't choose the drugs. I didn't _want_ them." Sam brings up a hand and scrubs his face with it, shifting his eyes to the wall next to him. He presses a hand to his mouth and Dean can see his eyes getting glassy. He shouldn't have brought it up, he shouldn't have brought it up, _he shouldn't have brought it up._

"Fuck, Sam, I know I'm sorry I just, I want things to get better, I want you to be better," And the worm slithers back into Dean, the fear making his heart beat a million miles an hour. _And what if it's never better? What if he gets worse and worse?_

What if normal never comes back.

"Can we just go home? AMA? We've done it before, why does it matter now." Sam's doing that thing where he won't stare at Dean and he chews on the inside of his cheek for the sake of avoidance.

Dean rubs a hand across his eyes and looks at Sam, who won't meet his eyes.

"You really want to leave?"

"Would it really be so bad?"

And Dean thinks about all the people here, all the people who come in and don't make it out and it suddenly feels like his heart has grown talons and clawed up his throat. Because what if the Sam who came in isn't the Sam that goes back home with him? He's lived too much to trust the hope in his head, but he's lived long enough with his brother to know this is what he wants.

"No. No, we can go home Sammy."

There's a worm, deep in his gut and the whispering in his head is unintelligible.


	7. Chapter 7

You'd think he was gone years.

Fingers trail softly over worn furniture, eyes drifting in between warm-colored light. Like someone imitated the light of the sun and tried to put it inside a glass cage. Sam observes everything, takes in every inch of the Bunker like he's seeing it for the first time. It's cold, he thinks, but it's a comforting cold. A cold that can go away. He's not used to that.

He runs his hands through his choppy hair and forces a smile when Dean says that his room looks exactly like he left it. Sam knows that means Dean's trying to pretend none of this ever happened, for both of their sakes.

It's not working.

They stop in front of Sam's room and Sam just stands there for a few seconds, chewing on his bottom lip. He doesn't want to go in. He wants so badly to go in. The truth is the Bunker never felt like home, and with good reason too. Just like a temporary 5-star hotel with a nice kitchen and good shower pressure. Everything in his room is replaceable, the room itself is replaceable, this whole _place_ is replaceable.

Sam opens the door and walks in, arms wrapped around his ribs as if he's trying to protect himself from something. It looks the same as always, empty.

"You hungry? Need anything?" Dean asks in possibly the most condescending voice ever. Sam knows it's not at all intentional.

"You didn't preserve anything. There was nothing to change." Sam whispers, looking up at the ceiling and sitting down at his desk chair. There is one pencil lying in the corner of the desk. It's crooked.

"What?" Dean asks.

"Nothing. I'm just…" Sam glances at his fingernails, at the sharp bone of his knuckles. "I'm tired. Probably going to take a nap."

"Oh. Ok. Holler if you need anything?"

Sam smiles, but as soon as Dean leaves and closes the door Sam shoots back up and opens it then closes it, checking to see that it isn't locked. Good. Not locked. He walks the length of the room and measures it with his feet. Then he touches every piece of furniture, feeling it's solidity. The fabric on the bed, the flannels hanging up in the closet, the jeans that sit folded in the drawers, the socks that are all bundled up. It's only once he's gotten reacquainted with everything he owns that he realizes the room has no windows.

There is not a single window in the Bunker.

And suddenly his feet itch and he starts to sweat and it feels like the ground is shaking and the whole structure is about to fall on top of him. He takes off his sweatpants and slides on a pair of jeans that is now too big for him and puts on a pair of sneakers, going as fast as he possibly can. Sam bends down and looks under the bed, grabbing his black Glock from inside a faded wooden box. He hasn't used it since before Stanford but he figures if he's going to shoot anyone they might as well die a painful fucking death. No one is touching him again, not on his watch.

Lucifer? That was his choice. Sam wanted to save the world and right his wrongs.

The last four months? Anyone lays a fucking finger on him again and Sam will unload the whole clip into them.

He closes his door and goes quietly, passing Dean's room where he sees his brother watching TV, only half paying attention. It's too loud for him to hear Sam padding quietly along the hallway and up the stairs. The heavy metal door that only they can open is loud, but not loud enough to alert Dean that he's leaving. It's dark outside, the bright stars dotting the sky roughly, the moon an in-perfect cut out shape.

Sam's tired. He's tired of being tired. Physically, he knows will get better. It will take a few months but he will get back to his full strength. The craving, like the one for demon blood, will never go away, but eventually, it'll file itself away in the back of his head.

He sticks the Glock in the waistband of his jeans, his hands in his pockets, and walks down empty Kansas road, half expecting a younger version of Dean to walk out of the wheat.

-x-

Dean does not notice, he does not wonder.

He does, however, trade wary glances with the Glock.

Sam's lying on a couch in the library, letting a migraine pass through him on a stormy Thursday. Like an avalanche, the pain cascades down, building up until it all hits rock bottom. Then the cycle begins again. The gun sits on his lap and his eyes are half open, focused on the arched ceiling. Somehow, he can no longer bear to have them closed.

"Sammy and his poisoned bullets. Reminds me of when we were kids."

Sam can't see him, but Dean's voice drifts into his ears from the threshold, quiet in its delivery but worried. He does not move, only raises the crook of his elbow to cover his eyes. A few seconds after, he brings it back down. There always has to be something he can use in his defense around him, something he can see. While he's weak and works to bring his strength up, he needs a weapon. The Glock lies in his lap now. If someone came in from the top he could just shoot up and pump black bullets into whoever came to kill him.

"Sam?" Dean's voice cuts through his delirium.

"What?"

"I asked if you wanted some water."

"No. No, thank you. I just…"

Want this fucking migraine to go away. Want to get out of the Bunker where it's dark and cramped. Want a goddamn break. Want to go back in time. Want Dean to stop being so nice. Want my life back. Want to stop living like everything is about to end.

"I'm fine Dean, just have to ride it out. You know how these things are." Sam mumbles and he assumes Dean nods because chronic pain is nothing new to them.

Chronic fucking misunderstandings, with the Winchesters they happen all the time.

-x-

Dean coaxes Sam to go with him to the grocery store a week after they arrive back home.

Sam is exhausted. After taking off every night and jogging until he's too tired to do much more, his body is exhausted. He'll be in the middle of the road and have to sit and crouch down because his lungs can no longer fucking take it. He'll stop and fall to his knees because suddenly he'll think that if he were _there_ again, he could get high and lay down to die, but he didn't go through all this _bullshit_ just to go back. He'll thumb the cold metal of his Glock and take the safety off because he knows if a car comes rolling past, ready to grab him off the street again there's always a second option.

Instead, Sam sits on his bed and laces up his sneakers, then pulls on Glenn's hoodie. He doesn't want Dean to feel like he isn't trying to get better. He doesn't want Dean to think he's doing too much to try and get better. It's like balancing on the thinnest wire in the world.

When the Impala pulls up to the Walmart, Sam and Dean sit quietly for a few minutes and neither of them is sure why.

"Sam, you can't take the weapons into the Walmart, man."

"I know."

"If someone, anyone, suspicious comes up to you I swear they will never see the light of day again."

"I know."

"You feel defenseless, and I get that, but I got your back, ok?"

"Funny, because I thought you'd always have my back." Sam snaps and doesn't bother looking at his brother's dumbfounded expression. He just gets out of the car, slamming the door behind him. He's being unfair to Dean, he knows he is, but there's something in him that constantly feels like he has to blame someone. Sam sticks his hands in his pockets and makes his way into the store, down to the coffee aisle. He doesn't even want coffee, just needs something familiar. If anything, it's his own fault. He should have been more careful, more alert. He didn't even put up a fight or try to escape when he was with them. Something in him still wonders why.

His uneven fingernails scratch at his wrist, red marks bright and angry on his pale skin. His eyes wander over the coffee and then to the rest of the store, focused on the sheer amount of people who are doing their shopping. Sam lets go of his wrist and crosses his arm, trying not to tap his foot so loudly. There are too many people, and any one of them could be here to take him again, and Dean is somewhere outside, probably drove back to the Bunker because Sam is being a little _bitch_ and when he starts backpedaling because he needs to get closer to the entrance of the store someone's hand lands on his back-

Automatic.

Sam grabs their wrist and twists, _hard_. He doesn't even look to see but just pulls until their wrist is behind their back. There's some screaming, or someone's calling his name, or both probably, but he just- They can't hurt him. He won't let them stick their needles in him again, or lock him up in the dark, he can't-

"Sammy! Sam let go of the woman you're hurting her," It's Dean. Dean stands across from him, hands held out in front of him, eyes big. They're red-rimmed.

Sam blinks, and wills his brain to function for a second, breath coming in short, drawn-out huffs. The wrist he's holding is soft and leathery. The shoes he's starting at are a pair of Propet sandals. He looks up very slowly and sees the person whose wrist he's pinning is an old woman. She stares at him and there's pain on her face and her eyes are wide open and she looks _terrified._

 _"_ Oh God, I'm so sorry, I'm so _so_ sorry, I didn't mean to grab you,-" Sam instantly lets go of her, backing off until he hits the opposite shelves, hands up in some sort of surrender. He keeps muttering apologizes and tries to ignore the small crowd that's formed at the end of the aisle, hands so shaky in front of him that he has to stick them back in his pockets.

"I'm so sorry ma'am, he's just, he's a vet- He didn't mean to," Dean's talking quietly to the lady, standing a safe distance away because if he gets any closer she'll feel threatened and he hears rumblings of "…ptsd…hard time adjusting…".

Sam's no veteran.

He catches pity in the old lady's eyes before Dean ushers him out of the store and back to the car, past the concerned onlookers. While they walk Sam glances at his brother and sees his face is red and blotchy.

"I'm sorry," Sam says on the drive home, gut twisting inside him, eyes burning, head banging and banging to a drum he doesn't recognize.

"It's ok. Not your fault."

Sam leans his head on the window and prays that Dean would just deck him in the face.

-x-

He runs.

He still tires easily, but the road is dark and empty and the wheat rustling is his only company. Ever since the Walmart trip, he's tried avoiding people, and considering the only person who's around is Dean…

It's silent in the Bunker most of the time.

Sam no longer attempts to go to Walmarts. He doesn't visit the Lebanon library anymore. He tries to spend as little time in his room as possible, but conversely, he never seems to be anywhere else.

At some point, he does some research to try and find out who took him and why, but he can't remember any faces or names or voices. Just the big metal needle puncturing his arm over, and over, and over. It surprises him, that Dean never asks any details, but he's never been one for talking feelings and any conversation regarding those four desolate months would surely involve some emotion on Sam's part. Sam just declares it a dead end in his head and hopes what they did to him they don't do anyone else.

His days become one motion after another, repetitive actions that he can't mess up, actions that are safe and calculated. What he knows he can't fuck up. He sleeps. He runs. He eats with Dean on occasion, but mostly in his room. He sits on the grass on open fields and tells himself if the world is this big, no one can ever lock him in a cell again.

He believes it, sometimes.

-x-

"Jody's coming over for dinner next week. That ok?" Dean asks over lunch one day. The kitchen has the lights turned up all the way, and Sam's already rearing to go back outside. In the Bunker, he feels like he can never get enough air, never get the fucking _itch_ out of his skin.

"It's not my Bunker, you don't have to ask me," Sam says as he pushes the lasagna around on his plate.

"Just want to make sure it's alright with you."

"More like you just want to make sure I don't snap her wrist, or scare her off or something, huh?" Sam says it under his breath, but loud enough to hear.

"Sam, come on, I _never_ said that…"

"Dean, stop- Just stop tip-toeing around me! I'm not 12 anymore if you need to say something to me then just fucking say it!" Sam yells, throwing his fork down on his plate and standing up fast enough to knock the stool he's sitting on to the ground.

Dean looks up from his food at that, eye twitching.

"Yeah? You wanna hear shit outright? How about, I _looked_. Huh, how about that?" Dean shouts back, standing up to look Sam directly in the eye. He looks absolutely livid.

And Sam? Sam just wants to make him angrier.

"Sam I looked for five fucking months and I couldn't find you! I searched this whole goddamn country, top to bottom. I tried to make a deal. I didn't even know you were alive."

I, I, I, I, eye, eye, eye.

Dean's eyes are glistening with anger. Sam thinks he probably looks the same.

"And when I finally fucking find you, when you finally fucking get out, you don't even want to talk! I know what happened was rough, but I'm just trying to help and get things back to how they were and you keep pushing me away-"

"Because you're not!" Sam throws his hands out indignantly, "You're not helping, you're not making me feel any better, you're not contributing to getting anything back to the way it was, things are _never_ gonna be how they were, it's like you want me to forget this ever happened-" He's talking so fast and so loud he's out of breath, chest heaving with the effort of letting go.

"Forget it ever happened? You're doing the _exact_ opposite of that. You always have that fucking sweatshirt on, and did he tell you? Did Glenn tell you how his son died? If I wanted you to forget it happened I wouldn't have-" Dean cuts himself off mid-sentence, going to the library and coming back with their green cooler, dumping it on the table.

"What is this?" Sam asks, eyeing his brother as his heart threatens to detonate in his chest.

"Open it Sam." Dean crosses his arms and stares at his brother, refusing to look at the cooler.

"Dean, what the fuck is this?"

"Open it."

Sam would say curiosity got the best of him, but in the end, he knows morbid fascination prompted him to open the cooler.

Tentatively, he moves forward to the edge of the table and slowly opens the green cooler. The stench is the first thing that hits him. The rank odor of dried, crusted blood. Inside the cooler is a stained brown bag. Sam unrolls it and gradually opens it, terrified of what he's going to find. Inside, there are rings. More than a dozen silver bands, most of them coated or splattered with dried blood. Sam leans back and presses a forearm to his mouth, stepping away from the table.

"What did you to those people Dean?" He asks, and for a moment he can't even get the words out because his head is spinning so fast. Bright, shining metal. That's all he remembers.

"One of them ratted the whole gang out. I went and did to them what they deserved, Sam, what they should have known was going to happen if they messed with a Winchester." Dean keeps steady eyes on Sam, trying to gauge his reaction.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Sam whispers, hurt eyes switching between Dean and the cooler.

"They sent me your hair, Sam. In a brown bag. Just chunks of your chopped hair." Dean says, and Sam hands automatically run across his scalp, feel where his hair is uneven. He doesn't remember anyone cutting his hair. If he doesn't remember that, then what else doesn't he remember? What did they do to him that-

"I knew what your reaction would be. Justice, but you wouldn't want me to hurt them like they hurt you, and that's not how we operate-"

"That's not how _I_ operate! You can't just go around killing people!" Sam shouts. "Dean if everything in this world were an eye for an eye, we would all be fucking blind."

"Sam, I did it for you. Now they can't hurt anybody else." Dean is steely, resolve clear.

"Of course. Of fucking course. You didn't even ask me, or tell me that you found them until a whole month later. Although I shouldn't be surprised, should I?" He says softly.

"Sam-"

"Fuck you." Sam says. He kicks the stool out of his way, the clatter of it on the tile the last sound he hears before he walks out of the Bunker.

-x-

The sky darkens and Sam screams in the middle of his field, shouts because he knows no one is listening, no one is ever listening.

Shouts himself hoarse, stays still when the rain comes crashing down.

After it stops, Sam can see the stars.

-x-

A few days later, Jody drives down all the way from South Dakota under the pretense that she has sheriff business in Nebraska and wouldn't mind driving the extra hour and a half down to Lebanon. Never a good liar.

Sam hasn't spoken since the fight with Dean, but when Jody comes to the Bunker they act as if nothing happened, and he just plays the croak in his voice off for a cough. She hugs him when she comes in, hugs him tight like he suspects a mother or an older sister would, and he hugs her back, forcing a smile to dry on his lips when she beams up at him.

"You look good Sam," She says kindly, and he lays a gentle hand on her back, following her down to the kitchen where Dean's cooking. They eat and have some beer, but it's mostly Jody and Dean talking, and when she asks why Sam's so quiet he just plays it off as exhaustion. He tries to contribute to the conversation, answer her questions of how he feels and how he's been doing, although Dean's probably already done all of that by phone. Eventually, while they're getting ready for dessert he excuses himself and says he has a migraine and that he's gonna go lie down. It's not untrue, but he doesn't know how much longer he can be around people talking about such mundane things. He's not sure if it's a cover-up or an attempt for things to go back to normal, but it makes his head hurt just to think about it.

He sits in the library for a few minutes and thinks it would probably do him some good to be around other people, but then as soon as he gets back up, he hears talking in the kitchen.

It's not very audible over the clink of dishes and cutlery but he hears Jody speak up first.

"He seems… sad. Is he doing ok? And I don't mean physically."

"It's been pretty touch and go. I think he just needs to readjust to people. The whole idea that it was just people who took him and not demons or any supernatural beings doesn't sit well with him. Hell, it doesn't sit well with any of us. Jody, I just-"

"I don't know what to fuckin' do. He's my brother, so I want to be there for him, but he's an adult and deserves his space. Either way, he's so tired all the time, of…everything."

"Sam's strong. He's just been through the wringer. No one deserves what he went through. I know I'd probably go insane if I was locked up for that long."

"Goddamn it. Frickin' kid doesn't deserve this shit, any of it." Dean sighs.

Sam rubs the back of his neck and gets up, eyes watering.

-x-

Sam stands in front of the mirror in his bathroom.

He runs a hand through his hair over and over again, pulling it tight and then letting go. His face is red and his eyes are glassy and there are no words he can use to describe how he feels. Instead, it all turns into pacing around the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub, head in his hands. He squats on the ground and tries to take deep breaths, tries to keep himself from fucking flipping out, but he just ends back in front of the mirror. Salty tears streak down his face, and he grinds his teeth to keep himself from punching the mirror.

There's this incredible fucking frustration inside of him, and it begs for him to tear anything down, to destroy whatever is around him. Something must come undone.

Sam goes into his room and takes a pair of metal scissors from his desk drawer, then heads back into the bathroom. In front of the mirror, his imperfections are clear. Even the way he moves shouts 'stranger', depicts unfamiliarity. He thinks his eyes used to be a different color, his bones a different shape.

He takes a lock of hair and pulls, cutting it off with a loud snip.

And then another, and another, and another until he barely has a centimeter of hair left. It falls into the neck of his hoodie, into the sink, onto the white tile. It doesn't matter. He takes his razor from under the sink and plugs it in, pressing down too hard on his scalp when he runs it down his head. If he doesn't do it rough it feels like he's not doing it at all.

There are nicks and droplets of blood, patches of hair, but now when he looks in the mirror and sees a stranger it makes sense. The razor falls from his hand into the sink and he sits on the toilet lid, looking at his hands. He doesn't even understand himself. He wants to be near people, wants them to understand that he is ok, but he can't stand anyone, doesn't want them to see him crack and crumble. There are scars on his hands that he doesn't recognize.

"Sam- Jody left, you didn't even-" Dean bursts into the bathroom, and when his eyes settle on Sam his whole face goes blank. Sam who has tears tracking down his cheeks, little bits of blood trailing down his ears and his neck. "Oh, fuck."

"Sam, you cut yourself." Dean walks over to Sam dumbfounded, takes his chin in his hand and looks at his freshly shaven head. "Jesus, Sammy."

His eyes linger a little bit too long on the tears in his eyes.

Dean goes over to the sink and grabs the clippers, not saying anything. He plugs them in by Sam and starts running them gently over his head, evening the shave. Sam just sits there and sniffs, thinking that he's too old for his brother to be cutting his hair and fixing things for him.

"You know I care, right? I'm just not- I'm not equipped to deal with stuff like this Sammy. You're an emotional guy, in the best way possible, and you have this way of dealing with other people, that when you start to isolate yourself I don't know how to help you." Dean turns the clippers off and sets them down on the toilet tank, grabbing a towel and wetting it a little bit.

"And the thing is man, I want to help you. But I can't do that, if I don't know how. So we need to figure something out-" Dean says it with a tone of concentration as he dabs at Sam's nicks and cuts. "Where we can deal with all of this, healthily, not by-" Dean chucks the towel in the sink and sits on the ground in front of Sam. "Not by giving ourselves piss-poor buzzcuts at one in the morning, yeah?"

"Yeah." Sam breathes and runs a hand over his hair, feeling the peach fuzz that is now left over. "Yeah, ok."

"Good." Dean stands up and pulls Sam up to his feet, pulling him close and gripping on to him tight.

"Dean I don't even want- I'm sorry." Sam says into his shoulder, and he has to bite his lip to keep his eyes from welling up again.

"Hey, you're home now. You're home now, and you're safe and its ok and we are going to fix this, just like we always do." Deans says, and Sam catches his reflection in the mirror and he sees someone awfully Winchester like, with the same colored eyes and same pointy nose.

"Ok." Sam couldn't fake this little smile, even if he wanted to. "Ok."


End file.
